Sunday, August 13, 2017

Now that we have the squares put together we are ready to add the blanket stitch around each square. In order to have a nice even looking crochet edging, the blanket stitch gives us a base to work with. So grab your squares, yarn, card stock for a template, safety pin, scissors, and a needle (see supply list in part 1 of the Crochet Fusion Quilt HERE) and lets get started adding the blanket stitch to our squares.

Here is a photo of a square with the completed blanket stitch, the yarn tails were left so they could be worked into the crochet edging later.

Instead of me trying to fumble through the instructions for the blanket stitch, I have found a wonderful Youtube video by Tiffany Behmer that gives great instruction on how to add the blanket stitch to fabric squares. You can access the video HERE

The squares for this fusion quilt ended up being 4-1/4 inches by 4-1/4 inches, so I made a full template with my card stock that is 3-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches, the tick marks are about 1/4 inch apart (see photo below). I found that my yarn needed to be 88 inches long to complete the blanket stitch all the way around the square. So be patient with the yarn as you work your blanket stitch, it can tangle at times!

Below is a photo of some of my squares with the completed blanket stitch waiting for the crochet edging.

If you have just joined the adventure, you can find the information for the Crochet Fusion Quilt part #1 by using the following LINK

I hope you are following along with Crochet Fusion Quilt Adventure, look for part 3 next week. This is the part where you get to crochet!

Thursday, August 3, 2017

A quilt made by mixing two different fibers together, cloth and yarn to create a unique blanket.

Sample of a Fusion Quilt square

How it all began

A few weeks ago I was cleaning out and rearranging my craft room/office, when I came across this crochet book called "Crochet For A Beautiful Home" published by Sedgewood Press in 1987. As I was flipping through the book (yes, I was distracted from my cleaning) I came across the page you see blow with the picture of the fabric and crochet bedspread. Since the book was from 1987 I knew there would be a more updated version of this project on the Internet. I did some research and found a few people who were quilters and a few crocheters who created a more updated version.

I wanted something that was easy and made the crochet and the fabric both stand out (I did not want the fabric to get lost in the crochet or visa versa). So I wrote up a list of supplies, and spent two weeks deciding on fabrics and trying out different yarns. Once I decided on the yarn and fabric it took another few weeks to come up with the crochet portion of the Quilt. I am very excited about this quilt and want to share with you my adventure in making it!

I will be sharing my Fusion Quilt adventure with you in 4 or 5 blog posts:

Gathering the materials and making the squares

Adding the blanket stitch to the squares

Pattern for Crochet edging

Connecting the squares

Finishing the Quilt: Crochet Edging

So lets get started with gathering the materials needed to make the quilt, the materials are listed below:

The first step in making this quilt is putting the fabric squares together, the goal is to make 80 double sided fabric squares. Instead of trying to explain the steps I have provided links to two great tutorials that do a great job of explaining the process.

High Tea Fusion Quilt Tutorial
This is a great youtube tutorial, easy to follow along, in this tutorial the person added batting to her squares, I did not add batting to my squares since I wanted a lighter weight quilt.